Max is too cool for school! Ты говоришь по-русский?
by StrataCrack
Summary: Shy, nerdy Max goes on an eye-opening backpacking trip. When he returns to School he feels the need to break out of his shell as a very different, confident and politically pro-Russian person. While his old friends are unsure whether they like the new Max his cocky attitude seems to have caught the attention of esteemed badboy Kai who always enjoys corrupting an innocent soul.KaiMa


**I always liked the idea of Maxie being a bit of a badass. I hope he's not too annoying, he's supposed to be a little intense and arrogant. Well let me know if you like where this is heading and if you want me to continue this story.**

Honourable Leader and Chairman

Max was a "Russo-phile", if there ever was one. From the day his grandfather first started teaching him about the cold war when he was nine, Max had taken on a fascination with the soviet union. He began researching the politics on his own time at the library, then he started picking up some Russian History books, about the Zars and Surfs, Peter the Great who had brought a fresh breath of medieval European culture to Russia, that had been centuries behind; the tales of Ivan the Terrible, who had poked out the eyes of the architects of St Basil's cathedral so that they could never again recreate something as beautiful; and accounts of when Russia had been occupied by Ghengis Khan and the Mongol Horde; and Napoleon's far less successful invasion; the terror from the teutonic knights that led to a small village, Muscovy emerging as the capital of the now largest country in the world; and all the magnificent art movements: the wanderers, avant garde and minimalism and modernism and suprematism. And of course the current political situation. Max liked Putin, he believed him to be a strong leader, as needed for a country as large and powerful as Russia and that the general American attitude towards him was primarily propaganda that proved the US to be intimidated.

As you can imagine, Max's political views didn't fly with pretty much everyone else in town. Especially his Mom and grandparents, who were still proud to be telling stories of the cold war, as if it was a good thing.

Something that hardly anyone knew, goody-good Maxie was a ranter, and no one got to hear more of his rants than his family at the dinner table (which is also the reason no one else usually heard them, -Max tired himself out). Even though they were everything but fond or supportive of his political views, they supported his hobby as they believed it instituted good study habits. An assumption that wasn't far from the truth at all.

Since there was no way in hell there would ever be a Russian class at Fairplay High in the 98% pure American Park County Colorado, Max had taken it upon himself to learn the discouragingly complicated, yet to him, so harmonic and beautiful language. Primarily from college text books he had ordered online and shitty movies on questionable sites that probably given his laptop a trojan. He had worked as a cashier at the local grocery store for years now to save up to this 2 month summer Russian backpacking trip after his junior year, only to decide and confirm once and for all that he _had_ to move there as soon as possible. And as soon as possible would be right after graduation. Max didn't care if he'd be low on money or whatever. A friend he'd met in Vladivostok had gotten him a job lined up at a screw factory that needed someone to translate and compose memos in English, with the prospect of maybe being trained as a machinist too. Not the highest paying job but it would suffice for a visa. Plus Max wanted the traditional Russian experience, and nothing was more Russian than working at a factory.

But before he could leave, he had to spend another year learning pointless, boring facts in high school. Max sighed. He had never found it to be this hard to get out of bed in the morning, normally he'd be excited about every first new day of the new school year, but not this time. He wasn't really motivated at all, after having spent his summer travelling and seeing the real world, everything at Fairplay High seemed so... childish. Pep rallies, student leadership, out of school activities for the sake of college applications. Right now Max didn't plan on University. And even if he would consider it later on, Russian Universities didn't require clubs or special interests or any child's play like that. The superior way to do it, in Max' opinion.

_Let's just get this over with,_ he though. He raised himself out of bed and put on his uniform trousers. He reached out for his button-up shirt that constituted the top half of the uniform and the atrocious yellow tie that completed it. He hated his uniform, it was uncomfortable, the fabric was so stiff and it looked ridiculous. He could just... not wear it. Like Kai and Carlos and those guys never did. Max smirked. Those guys never even wore their uniform shirts, so surely little Maxie could get away with not wearing a tie. As far as he noticed, none of the teacher's ever seemed to care.

He showed up for home room 5 minutes late, representative of his newfound slacker attitude.

The teacher hadn't even started roll call anyway.

"Maxie, how are you, I haven't seen you in ages!" his friend Emily greeted him. It was somewhat true, Max hadn't really sought out to hang out with them ever since he returned from Russia a week prior. Going back to his old life after the adventures he had in Russia just seemed... boring. Max wanted to continue being fun adventurous Max, not lame old spending free periods in the library and aspiring A's Max.

But he greeted Emily with a friendly smile. "Hey Emily, how have you been? You look tanned."

She did indeed.

"Oh thank you." she blushed. "My parents decided to take us on a trip to Costa Rica for a week, I can't believe you didn't know, I forgot you left before they even told us, you were gone for so long, you missed out on all the fun stuff that happened in the summer."

"Don't be silly, I'm sure Maxie had a much more exciting summer in Russia, how was that? I'm sure when you're off backpacking alone every day is an adventure, and you have two months worth of stories to tell us!" His friend Ray said.

Max smiled. "Well where do I even get started."

"How about the flight." Ray suggested. "I remember you were nervous about flying the Russian Airline."

Max giggled. He couldn't believe what a sissy he had once been. But he loved Ray for the fact that he was willing to hear the whole story.

"Nah man, I was worried about nothing." He pulled out his smartphone and showed them the pictures he took. "So this was me at my transit stop at Heathrow. And then over to Prague, which was way more interesting and beautiful than London in my opinion." Max showed them a picture of the stunning interior of the St. Vitus cathedral. "Since I had to catch a connecting flight anyway, I decided to stay in Prague for a night and go sight seeing there before moving on to Russia." He swiped to a picture of him smiling brightly amongst a magnificent wall of Vodka bottles. "The tax free shop at Moscow airport." he explained to Emily and Hilary who were giving him dirty looks. "In Russia liquor is sold amongst all the other grocery store items, there is no law against it."

They didn't get any further with the slide show as the teacher started taking attendance by calling up names.

Max' parents had decided for him to do at least one extra curricular activity, as a 'safety net', in case he decided to "finally give up on that Russia nonsense" and apply to an American University after all, preferably Ivy league, he had the grades after all. But Max wasn't interested in applying to any of those school. He chose the student council because he figured if anything impressed Russians, it would be leadership. He was an odd candidate for any role in the student council, as he didn't give a shit about pep rallies, games, dances, fund raisers or other school spirit crap. But he piped down on those opinions for now. Because even though he could just go off spending his free time doing something chill, like the chess club, he was still super-ambitious Maxie who couldn't help but work hard for what he wanted.

His friend Hilary was running with him. Although she hoping to be able to run for the role as president, while Max aspired something that required much less effort, such as treasurer maybe.

"Okay so the first step is to mingle amongst the groups, to make them like you and give them an incentive to vote for you." Hilary explained.

"Doesn't that seem kind of, you know, fake." Max pointed out.

Hilary smirked. "That's politics sweetheart, are you sure you're cut out for this?"

Alright a challenge that required him to get down and dirty, new Max could do this. He flashed Hilary his best politician smile and marched on.

They first approached the orchestra musicians. Hilary had some great ideas about relocating funding towards tearing up the morose flooring in the auditorium and replacing it with easier to maintain linoleum panels. However, their visit was somewhat pointless as their friend Emily was a violinist in the school orchestra, and already had convinced her fellow band members to vote for Max and Hilary anyway.

Then they moved on to eat lunch with Hilary's friends from Hebrew school. Most of them were pretty boring in Max' opinion, they just kept on going on about what Universities they wanted to apply to and where they wanted to work after. Max did however end up having a quite engaging conversation with a guy who had just gone on his Jewish Birth Right Trip to Israel. It was odd how his interests had shifted from applications forms and personal essays to stories of different countries and cultures.

"Nothing was more amazing than watching the stars out in the desert, without any city lights polluting the sky." the guy, Joseph, told him.

Max nodded, this made him miss the endless emptiness of Siberia. "I always enjoyed sleeping under the stars, it could get pretty cold, but during the warm nights I would jump at every chance to set my tent up at a camp ground."

Hilary soon decided they should hit at least another group. "How about Mariah and Lee and them. I'm sure Ray can put in a good word for us, they're his cousins after all." she said as they were walking outside, towards the courtyard.

Max rolled his eyes. "Yes Hilary, he will put in a good word for us. That's why I think we should invest some energy in talking to some people that will actually be challenging to convince."

"Like who?" she asked.

"How about the stoners. They're right there." Max suggested pointing at a set of tall bushes, that would generally have a stash of hippies hiding in them.

"Stoners? No way, I don't want to show up to class smelling of weed." Hilary protested.

Max shrugged and looked around. There was this one kid, Kai, his back facing them, standing by the wall doing nothing as far as they could tell.

"How about Kai."

"Are you serious? I don't think him and his friends vote. They hardly ever attend class."

Max shrugged. "Worth a shot." so he walked up to Kai, with Hilary running behind like a scared chicklet.

"Hey Kai." he called out.

He seemed to have caught him off guard because Kai flinched and dropped whatever he had been holding in his hand.

"What the hell, don't sneak up on people from behind like that." He yelled and bent down to pick up his lighter and a pack of cigs.

Max cracked up laughing. "Caught in the act, eh?"

Kai just smirked. "What? Are you gonna tell on me now?"

Max shrugged. "That depends, are you going to vote for us for the student council."

Hilary looked terrified. She couldn't believe that Max dared to speak to Kai like that. But Max was used to intimidating Russian men by now, and he had gotten pretty good at estimating who could actually harm him. And Kai, by his estimate, was physically his equal, and not at all scary compared to the angry truckers he had faced along the Trans-Siberian highway. And like Max had guessed, Kai was tame.

"I don't vote." He simply replied.

"Well, I don't normally snitch." Max responded with a grin plastered on his face. Messing with Kai was fun.

"Max, for crying out loud, cut it out." Hilary yelped.

But Max' cockiness was working, it had sparked Kai's interest: "Well, what are your proposals? Unless you are planning on retracting the smoking ban I'm not going to be interested in voting."

Max was silent for a second. Then he smiled, catching him an estranged look from Hilary.

"That is brilliant! That way I get all the votes from the people who normally wouldn't care enough to vote in the election."

"Yea, and those are like, 15 people." Hilary commented.

"No Hilary, this is High School, so smoking is cool and supporting it automatically makes me cool, right Kai?"

Kai nodded.

"You're weirding me out Max, you got strange in Russia." Hilary said, with some concern in her voice.

"It's just politics, sweetheart." was Max' snarky comeback.

The mention of his home country caught Kai's attention, he wasn't going to comment on it though, he didn't want to start sounding like... he cared. Because he was Kai and Kai was too cool to care.

"Well, Max, I'll keep your name in mind." he said and walked off.

Max grinned. "See Hil, that's how you get votes."


End file.
